Own the checkout, own the data.
WooCommerce gives a Kenyan store full control over checkout, payments and data at a lower recurring cost than hosted platforms. Haryes builds custom M-Pesa gateways, eTIMS-compatible invoicing, and tunes large catalogues to stay within the performance budget.
WooCommerce gives you control. Control is also a responsibility.
WooCommerce runs on your own hosting, with your own database, and no transaction fee going to a platform. For a store with custom payment logic or a large catalogue, that control is worth real money.
It is also where most Kenyan WooCommerce stores go wrong.
- A pile of plugins doing the work a developer should have done, each one a maintenance liability.
- A catalogue of a few thousand products on hosting chosen for its monthly price.
- An M-Pesa plugin that works until a callback is lost, and then quietly loses orders.
- Nobody patching anything, on a platform where unpatched plugins are the main way stores get compromised.
How a WooCommerce build runs
The platform is flexible, so the discipline has to come from the process.
Scope and hosting
Catalogue size, order volume and traffic decide the hosting before anything is installed, not after it gets slow.
Infrastructure that fits.
Theme and templates
A hand-built theme rather than a multipurpose one, with product, category and checkout templates designed for your catalogue.
Pages that stay fast at scale.
Payments
A custom M-Pesa gateway through the Daraja API, built to survive lost callbacks, duplicates and timeouts.
Payments that reconcile.
Invoicing and delivery
Invoices ready for your tax obligations, and shipping modelled on how your couriers actually charge.
Back office that matches reality.
Launch and maintenance
Migration, redirects, training, and a plan for updates and backups that starts the week you launch.
A store that stays healthy.
What a built store does that a plugin stack cannot
Four places the difference shows, usually within the first year.
- Largest Contentful Paint
- <2s
The main content is on screen in under two seconds.
- Page weight
- <800KB
Everything the page downloads, images included.
- JavaScript
- <150KB
Script shipped to the browser, per page.
The performance budget, applied to category and product templates
Checkout you control
Custom fields, custom payment logic and custom validation, because nothing in the flow is off limits.
The flow fits your business.
Data that is yours
Customers, orders and products in your own database, exportable at any time, with no platform between you and them.
No lock-in.
Costs that do not scale with sales
No transaction percentage. At volume this is the whole argument for WooCommerce.
Margin stays with you.
Performance at catalogue scale
Thousands of products stay fast when queries, caching and templates are built for it rather than patched later.
Built for the catalogue you will have.
What you get
Stores start from KES 40,000. See what a store costs.
A built theme
Not a multipurpose one.
- Templates designed for your catalogue
- Inside the performance budget
- Tested on a mid-tier Android phone
A custom M-Pesa gateway
Through the Daraja API.
- STK Push at checkout
- Lost and duplicate callbacks handled
- A reconciliation view for your team
Maintenance from day one
The part most stores skip.
- Updates and security patching
- Off-site backups with tested restores
- Uptime monitoring
Everything in your name
Code, hosting account and domain.
- Source code in a repository registered to your business
- Hosting account in your name, with billing you control
- Domain registered to you through a KeNIC-accredited registrar
Questions clients ask before they commit
Is WooCommerce cheaper than Shopify?
The build is comparable and the running costs are different in shape. You pay for hosting and maintenance instead of a platform fee and transaction cut, which usually favours WooCommerce at higher volumes.
Is WooCommerce secure?
The core is maintained carefully. Most compromises we see come from unpatched plugins and weak hosting, which is why we keep the plugin count low and maintenance is part of the plan rather than an option.
We have 5,000 products. Will it cope?
Yes, with the right hosting and templates built for it. Large catalogues fail on cheap shared hosting and generic themes, which is a configuration problem rather than a WooCommerce one.
Can you take over an existing WooCommerce store?
Yes. We start with an audit of plugins, hosting, payments and security, then give you a prioritised plan before touching anything.
Building, or rescuing?
You want control over checkout, payments and data.
We scope hosting, catalogue and payments before any code.
Scope my storePlugins have piled up and it is slow or fragile.
An audit first, then a plan you can act on in order.
See support and maintenanceWooCommerce rewards stores that are built. It punishes stores that are assembled.
